


This Side of Mortality

by Risilliance



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clint/Kate Brotp, Depression, Gen, Kate Bishop is partner of the year, Lucky licks things, Mentions of Bruce Banner - Freeform, Mentions of Phil Coulson - Freeform, Mentions of Steve Rogers - Freeform, Mentions of Suicide, Mentions of Tony Stark, Rated Mature because this could be hella triggering, Sorta Clint Barton/Kate Bishop, Where Clint was during Phase 2, deaf!Clint, fusion of MCU and fraction Hawkeye? Sorta?, hawkeye squared, mentions of Nick Fury - Freeform, please please please be careful
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-03-04 03:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2908037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Risilliance/pseuds/Risilliance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Getting up takes more strength than he's used in awhile, but he does it, because maybe he doesn't have a bow, or a gun, or half of his mind, but he has his legs, and they work alright considering the circumstances. He knows he's too dizzy to drive but he doesn't know of any alternatives, because it's not like the bullets they're aiming at his head would do him any good.<br/>---<br/>Clint Barton deals with the aftermath of being under Loki's control. Or rather, he does his best not to deal. Then he puts two and two together, beats some guys up, jumps out a window, and steals a car. Set a month or so after The Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. This Side of Mortality

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for depression and mentions of self harm, alcohol and suicidal thoughts had by main character Clint Barton. Lots of mentions. Basically the whole story. Please please please be careful.
> 
> Title from Soldier On - The Temper Trap
> 
> All mistakes are mine. I don't know much about being deaf so please feel free to correct me if I have something wrong.

The moments after he is set free are among the most painfully dizzying of his life. The rigid structure gave him a foundation. The clear conviction was a blessing. There is so much to be said for the ability to not know, to stay content in the dark. This is ripped away from him, and he collapses, afraid, squinting up at a blur of red hair.

"Tasha?"

The lights go out again. The darkness is comforting.

 

The nausea comes in the next hour as he struggles to sink back into a forced slumber. There are things he doesn't remember, things he should remember, things he knows that he did, but for the life of him, he cannot see the events play out in his mind. The restraints are the only thing keeping him from scratching at his eyes in the hopes of seeing the bodies that are no longer at his feet. 

Skilled hands undo the straps at his wrists. He is scared.

 

His hands are rough and calloused from the use of his bow. Nothing about this is out of the ordinary. Nothing about this speaks of the deeds done with those fingers, his body, a soulless vessel, a wandering killer. Nothing about this seems wrong, and he has to keep reminding himself of all the people the reports said he ended, all of the agents missing in action. It's impossible to know the true number, not with the lights still out in his mind. At night, he claws at the sheets like he's searching for a light switch. At night, he beats his head on his pillow and tries to shake him out.

 

They are decent to him, far more than they should be, a kindness so far removed from what he deserves. The interrogations are disguised as debriefings, so many, they say, because of the parties involved. He wants to spill the truth over their clipboards and notepads, wants to drown in the words and the blood, wants help in understanding what happened, but his mind is a well. The water has been drained.

The worst part, he thinks, is that no one fully believes him when he says he can't remember.

The worst part, he thinks, is that he doesn't even believe himself.

 

The dawn is soft and gentle on the morning the police sirens wail past his apartment on the way to rebuilding a better New York. The morning is smooth and easy on the day his cell phone rings unceasingly by his ear, on the table beside the bed. The day is hard and unforgiving when he finally decides he isn't needed at work. 

Natasha comes. He thinks she expects to knock some sense into him, knock the void out, knock the missing days back in. He thinks she expects to bring him back with her, protesting only half-heartedly. He thinks she expects to find her partner beneath the layers of self-loathing and coffee stains. When she leaves, he can feel her disappointment, but he's not sure who it's invested in.

Some days he expects to find Phil at his door. On those days he does his best to drink himself to oblivion, wondering why he is so unable to chose the things he forgets. There isn't enough alcohol in the world, he knows. He tries so hard to care.

 

They come back in flashes at first. 

Little vignettes of the things he may or may not have done. Mostly it's a view of Loki's grin, eyes narrowing, bending the wills of his own manipulation. Sometimes an arrow is nocked. The target is never in focus. Sometimes he can see the sky surrounding him, light wisps of clouds standing guard. He wonders what it's all supposed to mean. He wonders if he is really remembering.

At night, he clenches his fists as the sheets intertwine with his legs, damp from his sweat, worn from this abuse. He does not realize he is screaming until his voice gives out, and his hands compensate without his command, trembling as he pleads with the night in sign language. He does not know if he detests the panic that is constantly rising within him, or if he loves it, or if he has simply learned to live with it.

 

He does not know how to live with it.

This is clear to him when he wakes up, sprawled on the floor, broken bottles outlining his body, fists bloody from a violent confrontation with his bedroom wall. Vaguely, he wonders if his neighbors will ever call in the noise. Vaguely, he wonders if anyone can hear him. 

His hearing aids have been sitting on the table, next to his long dead phone, for what feels like an eternity. The world is easier to ignore now, and his place in it, and the people that used to be in it, felled by his own hand.

The flashes are getting longer. He remembers brief exchanges, something about an iris scan, something about bodies crashing down on him, falling from rooftops. He knows that he killed them. He still has not seen himself take the shot.

 

The next time he wakes, he's in his old quarters on the helicarrier, in his old bed, at his old job, or maybe current job, because he can't remember actually quitting. The fog from the beer won't allow him that clarity. The hangover is wicked, and his head aches more than the scratches on his arms or the bruises on his knuckles. He wonders if he will be restrained again. He wonders if that's not such a bad idea.

The therapist is Bruce's suggestion. She is a nice lady asking all the wrong questions about all the wrong things. She confuses him to a greater extent, bringing more variables into the equation. His father, his mother, the circus, the bow. On the day she asks him about his brother, he is no longer allowed to visit the shooting range. The arrows, already locked up, no longer lonely. The bow he was allowed to grip firmly in his hands as some sort of symbolic tether to reality is taken from him, stored with the arrows, with his knives, his gun. He is no longer allowed to be a weapon.

He sees Steve on the ship, once, casts a glazed glance over him as he walks on. He thinks he hears Steve say his name. He thinks he can hear the world around him, his aids in his ears as a personal favor to Tasha. He thinks he doesn't want to hear it anymore.

 

The memories are getting darker, more outlandish. He wonders if it's because of the pills. He has trouble sorting through the nightmares to find the strands of truth. He doesn't want to hear the end of the story he is weaving, doesn't want to hear anyone speak of his heart or his eyes. The microscope is on top of him. It's suffocating him, and he cannot see. He's too close to everything. He sees better from a distance.

His mind is a Rubix cube, and he thinks he has everything he needs to solve the puzzle, but the pieces will not fit together and the motions are getting repetitive. He tells the therapist this. He tells her because every space not filled with words reminds him of his hollowness. He does not tell her how addicting this feeling has become.

On the day he tells her how tempting the space between helicarrier and ground is, he is transferred to a building that's not high enough in the sky for his liking. The window in his room will not open. The nurses will not leave him alone.

 

He tells the therapist - here on the ground with him now - about Loki, about his scepter, the Tesseract, things he wishes were above his pay grade. He tells her that things are falling into place. He tells her that he doesn't want them to. She tells him about repressed emotions, as if, in all of his years of pathetic existence, he has never learned the meaning of the words. He doesn't tell her about the knife in his stomach that appeared at birth, doesn't tell her how it seemed to disappear under the control of the god.

 

He is in his room, white sheets and white walls, thumbing the surface of a quarter, lining up his target, taking the shot. The shatter-resistant plastic cup falls prey to his aim, but the broken bottles of his former days made a much more satisfying sound. When he looses his footing he thinks back to the sun beating down on his neck, thinks of the chatter in the background on the roof of his building, the smell of hot dogs on the grill. It's a coping mechanism. He isn't coping enough. 

The quarter is back in his palm and he is lying on his back, on his bed, thinking, maybe, if he swallowed it carefully enough, maybe he could choke on it before the nurses noticed. He thinks that the last blood on his hands should be his own. He thinks it would be fitting.

It takes a terrible effort to keep himself from trying.

Instead he turns the coin over in his hands because he picked it from a nurse's pocket, because it’s the most Clint-like thing he's done in weeks, and he's not about to let it go. 

 

At night his dreams are filled with coins raining down from the sky, blood pouring with it, and it's all his fault. There's an eagle in flight, trying and failing to claw its way above the grey and pressing clouds. It falls. He watches. He wakes up and somehow he just knows that something is off, something is wrong, something unfixable.

He knows that its not just him. 

He doesn't tell his therapist this.

 

He needs to get away. Not just from his own head. Not just from his workplace, or the questions that the therapist is asking, or the barely even mashed potatoes they are feeding him. This isn't just about running from his own problems. This is something much bigger. 

Paranoia sets in immediately. The details are still fuzzy. He can't remember anything useful, but enough to know that the others may know. Any badge that says SHIELD is a threat. Any mouth that says HYDRA is a target. This is enough to get him moving.

He stops taking the pills. He starts eating what he can, shoving it down his throat even when he feels the bile coming back up. He needs his strength. More than that, he needs his bow. He'd settle for a knife, but he knows it's impossible, so to hell with it. Before he was Hawkeye, he was Clint Barton. Before he used a bow, he used his body. The first weapon he ever held was his own, improperly made fist. 

He starts there.

 

He swears he's seen the look of shock on the security guard's face before, saw it on the last comrade he turned on, saw it on the first life he took. The image is gone though, another memory to slip from his sight, and he has bigger problems to worry about, like the stun gun that's trying to point at his heart. A couple moves later and the guard is down, and he is standing, and two more are coming his way. Dimly, he thinks about chess, thinks about calculated moves, about black and white pieces that only ever mix on the battle field. The king is the weakest player on the board. He's nothing without the pawns that defend him. 

He decides he doesn't want to be a pawn anymore.

He sidesteps the first guard to reach him, sees the second pull out something distinctly more gun-shaped than the taser in his hand, sees the safety slide off, sees the righteousness of orders in the guard's eyes. They mean to kill him. They mean to kill him and they probably don't even know who he his, what he did, why he's here. 

The electric sparks are shooting through the guard's bones before he has a chance to move his finger on the trigger. The one behind him gets a kick to the jaw. The sirens sound as the third body thumps on the ground, weightless, firm. The hallway is painted in red.

The glass of the second story window makes a satisfactory shattering sound that rings in his ears, but the sound of his body hitting the pavement hurts in more ways than one, reminding him of the thump thump of his heartbeat and the way that head wounds set free so much blood. Getting up takes more strength than he's used in awhile, but he does it, because maybe he doesn't have a bow, or a gun, or half of his mind, but he has his legs, and they work alright considering the circumstances. He knows he's too dizzy to drive but he doesn't know of any alternatives, because it's not like the bullets they're aiming at his head would do him any good.

Shame, really. They were so careful to keep him alive. 

He gets a lot of stares from folks walking the streets, but no one is crazy enough to stop him from stealing the first car he sees, some bland and silver thing that will blend easily for at least the next few blocks. He doesn't have a phone or a sense of direction or even clothes that don't look like pajamas. Technically any vehicle he drives should have a handicap sticker but technically he doesn't even have his driver's license and really, what kind of person would steal a car from a handicapped person? 

He's feeling maybe the tiniest bit more like himself as he checks his mirrors for any sign of a tale. He'll need to ditch the car soon, find another one, smear the trail he's leaving behind. He tries to ignore the shaking in his hands as he grips the steering wheel. He checks the position of the sun. He drives. 

When he feels like it's time to stop running, feels worn enough from tossing his tracks in the wind, he's at the farm. The phone doesn't work but the water is running faster than he is, and so he thinks that maybe he could stay a few days.


	2. Tell me Life is but a Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They share their coffee together some mornings when the sun is only barely awake and the sky is a blue-grey that matches his eyes. She opens the windows sometimes and the breeze slides over his skin. He doesn't know why she hasn't started yelling at him yet. Maybe she's waiting until he can hear her.  
> \---  
> Kate comes to the farm and tries to make everything better, but everything sucks until it doesn't. Lucky licks things and sleeps sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for depression but not as bad as first chapter, I think.   
> All mistakes are mine. Please correct me if I have something wrong.

The shadow walks like something out of his nightmares, too deadly but not dangerous enough. It holds a bow in its hands, his bow, quiver on its back, and he thinks he's finally going to see a body drop, only it will be him, shot by his own arrows. The shadow's shoulders aren't large enough to be his, though, so he reaches over to his gun, pauses, then reaches further for the lamp.

Kate's eyes snap close for the quickest of seconds. When she opens them he can see her pupils shrink. The arrow that she never aimed at him drops even lower, relaxed at her sides. "God, Clint."

He's alert now, sitting on the edge of a sofa that has seen better days. He looks at her like she might disappear, another trick his mind felt free to play on him. "Katie?"

"You look like hell." She drops her gear unceremoniously against the wall and turns back to look at him again. For awhile, they just stare, two almost-strangers in the deadened night. When she speaks, she doesn't break the silence, only the spell that's fallen over them. "You could have called."

His lip reading is out of practice but it's not a skill he can just forget, even after every cell in his body has been ripped repeatedly from his control. If it takes a second longer for him to string the words together, neither mention it. "I uh...I...your number. I couldn't remember it." He's called Natasha every day this past week, tried Fury's desk, couldn't call Coulson because Coulson is dead. He's not sure what he would have said if anyone had answered, not sure if anyone would have believed him if he told them that Hydra was as much a part of SHIELD as he used to be. "How did you find me?" He feels his vocal chords rub together and it's almost painful.

"Wiccan," she says, but doesn't elaborate. "Aren't you going to offer me some water?"

He points to the kitchen. "Glasses are in the cabinet." She rolls his eyes at him and it's almost like he never left, but every move is more careful than it used to be. He watches her leave the room, panics as soon as she's out of his line of sight. Another moment passes and he follows her. His batteries for his hearing aids have been dead for awhile and he hasn't gotten around to replacing them. They were issued by SHIELD anyway, and these days everything has a tracer in it.

The lights are on and she's leaning against the counter, glass half empty. "You missed Christmas, you know."

"Again?"

She nods, but he doesn't apologize because he's not sure if he can find it in himself to feel sorry. "I don't know how long I was out."

"The last time I saw you was after New York. Almost a year ago." 

A year. Feels like an eternity.

"Clint?" She says, and he thinks he catches her hesitate slightly, afraid of her own question. "What the hell happened?" The anger was exhausting her, and so she let it go after awhile. The rage made it easier to forget the fear she felt for her friend, but she had to let it go.

"I...shit. Kate...I don't know." It's not an explanation, but it feels safer than explaining what's really going on. He hasn't even said the words yet, but they taste bitter in his mouth. HYDRA. SHIELD. Two sides of the same coin.

He thinks she's trying to say something else, but he's already turning away, pointing her to a spare room down the hall that she can sleep in if she wants to stay. In his head he can hear her saying something snarky, or maybe she's yelling at him for jumping ship, or maybe she's telling him that it's okay not to know.

He dreams about Loki that night, about him coming back, about the arrow he couldn’t drive into his eye.

 

 

He's surprised when Kate's still there in the morning, standing at the kitchen sink in sweats and a t-shirt. He thought that she might have been a dream too, or maybe that she'd give up on him and go back home to her team. Instead, she throws something at him.

She sets down the dishrag and signs _Compliments of Tony Stark_ like she's been practicing the movements for a long time. He barely remembers teaching her ASL, barely remembers her picking it up quickly. Not perfect, by any means, but quickly.

He wants to ask her why she's still here but instead he opens the box. Out of the corner of his eye he sees her hands moving again, a bit nervous but steadier than his, explaining that Stark had a lot of time on his hands and needed something to do and figured that his hearing aids could use an upgrade, so, yeah.

He smiles at her, signs his thanks, and sets the box down, because he's not sure he's ready to hear her voice again. He turns to the fridge, looks for something edible, but he feels Kate's eyes on him and it's distracting. She's disappointed, but it's not the first time that he's let her down.

  

 

She brought Lucky with her. At first he feels horrible because he can't remember the last time the dog crossed his mind, or when he gave him to Kate to take care of, or if he even gave him to her at all. The dog doesn't seem to mind, though. Mostly he just seems happy to smear his tongue all over Clint's face.

 

 

They share their coffee together some mornings when the sun is only barely awake and the sky is a blue-grey that matches his eyes. She opens the windows sometimes and the breeze slides over his skin. He doesn't know why she hasn't started yelling at him yet. Maybe she's waiting until he can hear her.

"They gave War Machine a redesign," she says when she pulls his attention away from the wall.

He doesn't feel like making small talk but he doesn't know anything about anything that happened in the past year and he thinks maybe he should change that. "What's a War Machine?"

"He's Iron Patriot now."

"Who's Iron Patriot?"

"You know, Iron Man's sidekick or something. I think he's air force."

"...Captain America?"

"No...his sidekick."

"Tony doesn't have a sidekick."

"Whatever. His friend."

"Tony doesn't have any friends either."

"You know, the guy in the silver Iron Man suit?"

" _Jarvis?_ "

She sighs. "Never mind."

 

 

Some days Kate drags him from the coffee maker and pulls him out the door. She pushes a tennis ball into his hand and calls Lucky over and prods at him to throw it. He does, and he watches his dog chase after it, and it strikes him as odd, how normal Kate is trying to make things, as if they were in Central Park during any other year and aliens hadn't rained down on New York.

Lucky brings the ball back to him so he leans down to scratch his ears and asks him if he knows a good dog and if, in fact, that good dog is Lucky. After he sends the ball flying back across the field again, he looks at Kate, who's looking at him, and asks her what she's doing here.

"Natasha told me to bring you back."

He struggles to find his next question - there are so many and he just can't land on one - but he's taken too long and Lucky is back and he looks like he's barking. By the time he's thrown the ball a third time he's lost any resolve he had to try.

He gives the ball to Kate for the fourth throw and doesn't stick around for a fifth.

 

 

Clint's fallen into the habit of not eating unless Kate makes him eat, and it's a wonder he survived so long on his own. He figures she's been there about a week, maybe two, when she looks at him pointedly and tells him that she can't take it anymore. He thinks she's shouting. He thinks that this is finally it. She's going to call him out, take the dog, and leave again, and he thought he liked being on his own but suddenly the idea makes him nauseous. Before she can get another word out, he tells her that he's sorry, and he thinks that maybe he means it, or can get to the place where he means it soon, but it's all he can say before he's out of words, before Kate starts yelling again.

"Damn right you're sorry. There's barely anything edible in this house and I can't get you on your feet long enough to get to a grocery store."

She waits for him to say something but he's confused because this isn't going where he thought it was going. Instead, she tells him that this is it. She's done. She can't do it anymore. She's going to drag him out of the house for one night and he's going to have to deal with it.

 

 

They're at a diner on the edge of a town that took half an hour to get to because his farm is planted firmly in the middle of nowhere. He's drinking coffee and the waitress is asking him what he wants to eat. He looks at Kate, who orders for him, because he can't focus his eyes long enough to read a menu that has so many pages on it. He's pleased, though not entirely surprised, when the waitress sets down a plate of bacon and eggs and waffles in front of him. Kate is eating a salad that looks only slightly pretentious.

He's through half of his hash browns when he looks up at Kate, who's looking at him, and asks her where Natasha is.

She seems a bit more relaxed than she was the last time he asked a question, maybe two or three days ago, but maybe she looks a bit uncomfortable too. "I don't know. With Captain America probably. She couldn't tell me where."

"You said she told you to find me."

"She did...it was just...off the record."

His brows crease slightly and she's afraid that he's putting an end to the conversation when he looks back at his plate to cut his waffles. He does ask another question though, or rather asks his waffles, before he looks back at her for an answer and she's not exactly sure what to say. "So you're not supposed to be here?"

"I'm not... _not_ supposed to be here. I'm just here off the record."

He doesn't say anything else until _his plate is clean_ and it's a small victory for them both but a victory all the same because she can't remember the last time he ate so much in one sitting.

"How much do you know?"

It's a bit of a loaded question and she doesn't know how to answer because she knows a lot that she's not supposed to know. She knows a lot that Natasha told her and a lot that Wiccan found out and a lot from the SHILED files she stole and she doesn't know where he wants her to start. "I know...I know about Loki."

"I know. I told you about him." He remembers seeing her after New York, the battle that happened almost a year ago. He remembers telling her about the guy behind it all, brother of Thor, who Kate swooned over.

"No, Clint. I mean...I know."

_Oh._

His hands form fists because he doesn't want her to see them shake or know how much it bothers him. He thought that one day he might tell her, but he always thought that he would be the one to do it, and the fact that she knows makes him uneasy and maybe a little scared and there are a thousand reasons why.

The waitress asks if they want desert but Kate asks for a check instead and hastily leaves a tip before pulling Clint out of the building and into the car. She thinks that she might have just ruined any progress they made and she isn't sure what to do. She thinks maybe Lucky would be better at this than she is, so she turns on the car with the intent of speeding back to the farm, but as soon as she turns the key Clint tells her to wait.

He's looking down at his hands, or maybe past them, and she watches his fists shake. The silence stretches on and she's about to give up and pull out of the parking lot because maybe it's Spring but the night still gets cold and inside of her heart it's even colder. She tries to turn the key again but he says her name and it echoes between them and all she can do is watch her friend-boss-partner try not to break down.

"Wait...just...please."

He's not looking at her, but she tells him that she'll wait anyway, and she does, for a long time.

"Are you...are you afraid of me?" When he finally asks what he's really been wondering, his voice sounds like it's breaking, denying the control that he seeks. He doesn't look up at Kate, can't see her say "No," can't see her shake her head, so she reaches out to his shoulder and when she touches him, he jumps, startled.

 _"I am not afraid of you._ " She says it slowly and deliberately and pretends that neither of them have tears in their eyes when she says it again, louder this time, and signs it for good measure. She thinks that the words take awhile to find him, hindered by his blurred vision, and she almost says it a third time, but Clint finds his voice first.

"I am." He says it in a strained whisper that stabs at Kate, at her vital organs, all of them, and for a moment she is sure she is dying. In the next moment Clint washes his face with his hands, tugs on his hair a bit, turns to the window, and when he speaks his voice is low and even. "We need some dog food...might as well get it while we're in town. We need some dog food...for Lucky."

Kate doesn't know what to do so she drives to the grocery store and buys enough dog food to get Lucky through the next five apocalypses, and maybe some people food, because the fridge is empty and the pantry is bare and their lives are a mess. Clint watches her pay and takes the bags from her hands before walking back to the car. They drive to the farm in silence.

 

 

It's the fifth night in a row that his screaming has woken her up, and this time, _this time_ she almost opens her bedroom door and tries to reassure him that it was only a dream, but she's not sure that she can promise that because she's not sure what he's dreaming about. She hears his footsteps in the kitchen and hears the fridge open and hears him take out something, the milk, maybe, or a bottle of water. She thinks back to the hours before, sitting in the parking lot, and firmly decides that, no, she's not afraid of him, but she's definitely afraid for him, and she's very afraid that she won't be able to help.

 

 

Lucky is sitting at his feet when Kate drags herself to the kitchen. It's early and she's tired but she couldn't sleep if her life depended on it, so she might as well start the day. She's not surprised to see that he is also awake,  but she is surprised to find him a lot more awake than she is. Lucky looks dead to the world.

"Coffee?" he asks, and it's not quite unlike any other morning, but this time there's a mug at her seat, and a spoon, and the coffee creamer because he knows she doesn't drink it as black as he does. She let's herself smile, signs a _Thanks, Hawkeye_ , and sits down across from him. When she looks up at him, he's looking at her, signing back _No problem, Hawkeye,_ and if she ignores the beat up farmhouse and imagines his beat up apartment, it's almost like they're back to a year ago.

He looks agitated, but she doesn't think too much of it, because last night was rougher on him than it was on her, probably. She sips at her coffee, only looks away from the wall when Clint says her name.

"I...I heard you crying last night."

Her first instinct is to deny it, because _Kate Bishop doesn't cry_ , and when she does, it's only when no one can hear her. Her second instinct is to look at him funny, because Clint Barton is one of those people who shouldn't be able to hear her.

"And I guess I just...wanted you to know that I'm sorry. Really. God, Katie, I'm so sorry for all of this."

Instead of responding, she looks at the box that Tony gave her, the one that had not moved from the counter since Clint had set it there, the one she had been staring at for the past two weeks.

The box was open, empty.

"...and I know I've got a lot of issues to work out with...well, everybody, but I don't want to dump my baggage on you. You don't….yeah, you don't deserve that, and…"

She's so relieved that she doesn't know what to say or do or how she should react but she knows that he can hear her now, so she probably ought to say something, and if the first thing that comes to her mind is, "You're a fucking asshole," then so be it.

He drops the speech she wasn't listening to and looks down at his mug. "Yeah...I know." He sighs and goes to get a refill from the coffee pot but before he can pick up his mug he's being attacked. He's had nightmares about this sort of thing, but it's always about Loki impaling him and never about Kate hugging him.

" _You're a fucking asshole_ ," she says into his shirt, but her words are broken and her breath is hitching and he knows she doesn't mean it, however much he may deserve it. This time, instead of agreeing with her, he wraps his arms around her sobbing form and kisses her hair and tries not to lose it. Lucky is still dozing, tail waging in his sleep, and Clint thinks that maybe soon he'll be in a place where things can be okay again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might write another chapter with these guys because this is actually really therapeutic but I'm still really sorry for everything I'm doing to these characters.


	3. And Though Above the World May Toil and Turn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're at the grocery store and he's staring at a rack of Sunday Papers and he's pretty sure that the headline has never been any more irrelevant to him, something about a politician he can't place doing something he can't believe is considered politics.  
> \---  
> Clint isn't really ready for anything but it's okay, because two Hawkeyes are better than one and Pizza Dog is the best dog to ever dog. The sky is really pretty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for references to suicide but it's really all a bit of a misunderstanding. If you were alright with 1 & 2, you'll be fine with this. 
> 
> All mistakes are mine. Feel free to correct me if I have something wrong. Kinda screwing with the timeline of MCU a bit from here on out so ignore that bit.

His eyes look haunted, like he's still seeing the bodies that are six feet under and rotting by now. She tries to talk him into getting a TV, but he says he's not ready for that, so she tries to talk him into fixing the heater and he says that he'll try to find the toolbox. She counts it as a victory.

Sometimes he starts talking to her like he has something really important to say, but he always stops himself before the words can come tumbling out. They haven't really talked about anything since that night at the diner, and she's too afraid that if she pushes him, she'll push too far and send him falling.

A few times she finds him at a phone that's so old it still has a cord on it, but she supposes she should be grateful for any sort of phone service at all, modern technology be damned. She watches him pushing the buttons from the next room over but he always seems to put the receiver down before he gets to the last digit. She thinks about old record players, and the way the albums skip when they're scratched, and the way that they shatter when dropped, and how they can't be put back together again.

 

 

He's sitting on the steps of the front porch, scratching Lucky's ears and watching the sky darken as the sun sets the Earth on fire. She stands in the doorway behind him, and debates on turning around because she's not sure if he knows she's there, because she's not sure if his aids are in. There's a hot shower and a couple blankets that are calling her name but she tries to take a gamble anyway. "There's something on your mind, isn't there?"

She waits for him to answer, waits for minutes as they watch the sun disappear, together but separate in the deepest of ways, waits until just before the stars seep out of the night sky to light the path of ages past. She doesn't want to turn her back, wants an answer to a question that she's not sure he heard, but she's so afraid to push him.

 

 

Her hair is still wet when she leaves the bathroom, woven into a braid. He's back inside, refilling Lucky's water bowl. One of the light bulbs in the kitchen has gone out. She asks him if he has any spare bulbs, but he's looking at Lucky, not her, and she can't bring herself to bridge the distance between them. She says goodnight to a man that won't hear her, but before she leaves the room, his voice stops her. He tells her that she's right.

She has a confused look on her face but instead of saying anything, she stands in the doorway and stares at his back because his back is still turned to her. She's almost sure that his voice was only her imagination, but she decides to test it out anyway. "What am I right about?"

He gives a heavy sigh before finally turning around and looking her in the eye for what must be the first time in days. "There's something on my mind."

She waits for him to elaborate and when he doesn't, she feels like maybe he's giving her permission to push him a little. So she asks him if he wants to tell her, and tries not to rip her hair out when he says that he doesn't know how to tell anyone.

 

 

They're at the grocery store and he's staring at a rack of Sunday Papers and he's pretty sure that the headline has never been any more irrelevant to him, something about a politician he can't place doing something he can't believe is considered politics. He's been staring for a few minutes when Kate feels as though it is her duty to remind him that the paper won't bite. He tells her that he can't believe how little the world has changed since he stopped being a part of it, and she tells him that it's changed a lot more than he's realized. He doesn't respond, so she leaves him for the cereal aisle, only to be confronted with the realization that she shouldn't leave him alone in here. She goes back to collect him and thinks about bringing Lucky's leash next time. She tells him that, if he wants, he can take the paper home, and Clint sluggishly picks one up and puts it in the basket.

They're about to head to the checkout when he reminds her that the kitchen light is out. She smiles lightly, but doesn't let him see, and after they finish checking out and Clint takes the bags from her hands and into her car, they go over to the hardware store and have a 20 minute debate on energy efficient light bulbs. It's the most that he's talked to her in the past year.

 

 

He's alone, on his back, on his sofa, and his aids are still in his ears because maybe sometimes they're uncomfortable, but he's also a lazy ass and the batteries are supposed to last him a couple of lifetimes anyway. It's the middle of the night, Kate's probably asleep, Lucky is snoring, and Clint is throwing a tennis ball up in the air and catching it because he wants to do something with his hands, but he can't bring himself to ask Kate to use her - his?-  bow yet.

Kate had asked him if there was anything good in the paper but he told her he wasn't ready to read it yet. She did nothing to let him know that she was disappointed, but he could still see it, maybe because he's disappointed in himself.

There's this war in his mind, the sickening idea that he's making all of this up, the nausea that comes whenever he thinks about the people he killed. He's remembering more every day, slowly reclaiming every moment that was taken from him, but he's not sure if it's real and he knows he doesn't want it to be. Kate told him that she wasn't scared of him, but he told her that he was, because he remembers going hand-to-hand with Natasha and he knows he wouldn't have hesitated to kill her if he had the chance. He remembers her telling him that it wasn't his fault, monsters and magic and gods of trickery. He thinks that if the universe turned itself inside out and their roles had been reversed, she would not have believed him.

 

 

The last time Kate had to go through these motions, she was the one who needed therapy. The difference between the two of them is that she had gotten help, but now she's the only help he's got. She has half an idea of what happened at the facility they put him in, maybe saw a security tape that she shouldn't have, maybe picked up a few things that Natasha led her on to. She knows enough not to bring it up right now, but she also knows that they should be talking more than they are. 

She thinks about this some days, when she's buttering her toast or pouring milk on her cereal or climbing into a bed she won't be able to sleep in. She thinks, but she never acts. She thinks maybe it's time to push him a little, maybe it's time to find her friend and bring him back to earth.

 

 

She finds him on the roof.

There is a very sudden burst of panic within her as she finally understands what's gotten Lucky barking so much. She knew this was a possibility, she knew that she had to be careful with him, but she thought that maybe he was okay enough with each day to see what would happen on the next. She runs without saying a word, through the door, up the stairs, all the while trying to process the events as they happen. She thinks, too late, that maybe she should have tried to talk him down from the ground, but abandons the thought by the time she reaches the window. She hasn't figured out what to say because whenever she sees him jump from a building, he's always got the proper gear on to keep him safe. Maybe this is why, the moment she sticks her head out the open window, she tells him, "You gave me the first grappling arrow that I ever shot." She's breathing heavily and she hopes he sees the words for what they are. A question. A plea. _Please stay._

He looks like he's expecting her, like he saw her and her wild dash to reach him, maybe put two and two together before she even got to the second step. He tells her that he knows he's a disaster, knows his life is a mess, but that if he came up here to off himself, he wouldn't have brought his coffee mug. He raises it in some mock toast to her.

She tells him he's a lunatic and tries to slow her rampant heartbeat. She tells him to get the hell off the roof, but instead he moves over and invites her to join him. He says that he's not going to share his coffee, though, so don't ask. She calls him a lunatic again, but takes the hand that he offers because she's afraid of what will happen if she doesn't. Three stories below, Lucky is looking at them as though they are bird-brained idiots. 

"You know, three stories probably wouldn't have killed me anyway." 

"I still would have had to load your ugly ass into the car and drive to the hospital."

There a pause that stretches on as far as the miles of farmland before them. He watches the field and says he's sorry. "I probably should have let you know that I was up here."

"What are you doing here anyway?"

He rocks his coffee cup a little, swaying the liquid inside. "I used to come up here with Barney when we were kids."

"You used to live here?"

He nods. "Before my Dad drove my Mom into a tree. Then it was a handful of foster homes. Will got all screwed up since we were under 18 when it happened, and to be honest I don't think they ever filed it straight anyway. Then we ran away, joined a circus, and it didn't matter anymore. Think the State was supposed to sell it, but they screwed that up too. It bought it back from them a few years ago. Figured it would be a good safe house if I needed one. SHIELD doesn't even know about it. Hell, there's a lot that they don't know about."

The breeze takes away the words that either of them would have said next. Kate stares at the horizon that he must have stared at as a kid and wonders what it means to him. "The world's too big for one Hawkeye, Clint."

"Especially one that doesn't understand the value of a boomerang arrow." He's quick to quip, and Kate doesn't know if she should be angry at him for not taking her seriously, or relieved because he never takes anyone seriously. She's about to say something equally snarky, but he looks like he's going to say something else and she can't afford to talk over him. He doesn't look at her, but he does tell her that he doesn't want to leave her with anymore messes to clean up, so, no, he's not going to jump off the roof without a grappling arrow.

She asks him if he wants those back.

He tells her that he isn't ready.

 

 

He's out with the dog before Kate wakes up. The sun is taking it's damn time to drag its light across the sky, but it's light enough to see  and it's not like he's half blind or anything. Lucky is feeling playful today. He brings Clint a stick, and while he desperately wants to go back inside to his coffee, he can't say no to the way the dog's tail is wagging. So he throws the stick again and again because apparently they live in a cartoon where dogs will go for things like that. Clint is very thankful that dogs exist.

There used to be crops growing up everywhere, but the place has been abandoned for a couple of decades and, being a city dog, it's probably more open space than Lucky's ever had access too. So when he runs, instead of saying something along the lines of, "Aww, dog," Clint runs with him.

They're both covered in mud by the time they come back, the sun finally making its appearance.  Kate's standing on the porch with a jacket on and a mug in her hand. She doesn't look worried, only appalled at the amount of dirt caked on their clothes and fur. "You know, when you said you were a human disaster, I didn't need a visual aid."

He tells her that she's not very funny and that it was the dog's fault, and then tries to go past her into the house.

She tells him that he has to hose down both the dog and himself before he steps foot inside. She will not be cleaning up his mess, she says. An addiction to coffee is no excuse to drag his muddy boots across the house, she says.

"Aww, dog."

 

 

He's cold all the time. Not just at night when the temperature drops 20 or 30 degrees, not just when he's seeking shelter from the rain, a chill on the back of his neck, not just when Kate is wrapped up in his blankets like some sort of Hawkeye burrito. He's cold when she's in a t-shirt too.

It was something he noticed back at the facility. He was too drunk after the battle, too dull on the helicarrier, but there was nothing to take his mind away from himself when his therapist was so bent on stuffing him back in. He attributed it to the flimsy material his clothes were made of. Now he knows. He's cold all the time.

He's cold all the time and at night he can feel Loki's hand around his throat, dreams about frozen ocean waves crashing down on him, dreams that his coffin is icing over and he can't hear his heart beat over the sound of someone's driven and manic laughter.

When he wakes, he knows it's a ridiculous fear because there's already one Avenger who was frozen in an ice cap and another one would just be redundant.

 

 

"You ever gonna move your ass off the couch?" She's in the doorway, watching him throwing one of Lucky's tennis balls above him and catching it as soon as it's in reach. He doesn't acknowledge her, but she's tired of tiptoeing around him. It's three in the afternoon. He's barely gotten up to piss and grab a cup of coffee. He hasn't done this in awhile.

She remembers those days too, remembers how the world felt so much safer from her bed with no one around that could harm her. She remembers the crushing weight of events that were beyond her control. She remembers doing anything she could to shut everyone out.

"Clint, come on, let's go play with Lucky." He seems to really like his dog - why wouldn't he? Lucky's a champ, being a really good sport about his sometimes-competent owner. Still wags his tail whenever he sees him. Presently he's taking a dog nap right by the couch. Neither of them move.

"Want some breakfast for dinner? We can go to the diner. Or, hey, we haven't tried that pizza joint yet. We haven't gotten pizza in awhile." And now she's really worried, because if the idea of pizza doesn't get him moving, what hope does she have?

There's a half-chewed tennis ball near her feet. She thinks she could bounce it off the wall and land it right between his eyes. Instead, she opts for the less sadistic path and knocks the tennis ball that he's throwing off its course. "Hey!"

He rolls over, spots her in the doorway, asks, "what was that for?"

"Are you even listening to me? Look, I know it's hard, and I know you don't want me around all the time, and I know that this is going to take awhile for you, but could you just...you know...work with me? Or at least acknowledge me?" She's speaking fast because she doesn't know what to say so she decides to tell him everything that's meaningless. She's speaking fast, rambling a little, and suddenly she wishes she _did_ get him between the eyes because he has the audacity to put a hand up to stop her.

"Hang on for a minute, you're speaking too quickly. Let me get my aids in." He snatches them from the table and fits them in his ears, and when he looks back at her expectantly, the only think she can say is, "Pizza later." before escaping to her room because maybe she's a bit embarrassed.

_'Are you even listening to me?' Kate Bishop, you dummy._

 

 

The newspaper is a week old by the time he picks it up again, hardly considered news by today's standards. He reads it at the kitchen table while sipping his coffee because his coffee is warm and he is cold. When she finds him there, she joins him, asks him if there's anything good.

"Like I said, Katie-Kate. World didn't change much since I've been under. Crooks are still crooks, politicians are still politicians, and the government's still questionable at best." Secretly he's glad that some certain status quo has remained unchanged, a constant that he can rely on in the face of extraterrestrial invasion. Some part of him wants to ask what the world thinks about that, but he's not sure he's ready to know.

"So you got all of that out of today's read?"

There's a beat before he looks up, raises an eyebrow, puts her words together as he says, "What? No. I got all of that from that Peanuts cartoon. It's been a year and they're still calling the poor kid a blockhead."

Kate rolls her eyes but can't help the quiet laugh that bursts from her rib cage. She even thinks she sees him crack a smile.

 

 

"I've been thinking."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

They're on the roof, eating cold pizza and watching the sun set like it's some sort of cheesy coming-of-age high school movie. He cringes when he thinks about the cliché that they've become, but decides to ignore it because the clouds are rolling through, and the colors springing in the sky are gorgeous. Deep reds, oranges, fading into vibrant purples and the sort of dark blue that only the sky can create. He drinks in the sight like nectar from heaven because he knows that nothing this spectacular will stay for long, not when he's around. He's been staring into space for a month now, sat on this roof for the roughest years of childhood, and hasn't seen anything as beautiful as this.

"So are you gonna tell me what you're thinking about girly-girl, or am I gonna have to guess?"

"I've been thinking about how I never told you why I took all those self defense classes and had those archery lessons and stuff."

He spares a glance at her. He has an idea of where this is going. Origin story. Everybody's got one. No one likes to share. "Hey, y'know...you don't have to."  
  
She tells him anyway. She tells him about that night she was walking alone through Central Park. She tells him about the crushing fear she felt every day after. She tells him everything she thinks he should know, nothing more, nothing that should weigh him down any more than it weighs her down on the best of days. When she's done, her hands are shaking and the sky is a dark grey, but the horizon is a sliver of the brightest yellow she's seen in awhile. She hopes that he's paying attention to it.

"I'm not telling you this so you can feel bad, or trying to guilt trip you or anything. You know I wouldn't do that. I just want you to know that...look, whatever you're feeling? I've been there. And I know you have too. But you don’t have to do it alone this time. Okay?"

"Yeah," he says. His hands are also shaking. "Okay."

"Because," she swallows, steels herself before she looses her nerve. "Because you and me? Together? I think -"

"Together we're the person that we both wish we could be." He barely remembers the first time she said that, but he remembers the first time that he knew it was true, and maybe that's all that really matters.

The sun is gone now, but her smile has replaced it. She bumps her shoulder against his, he bumps her back, some unspoken promise of better days passes between them. Down on the ground, Lucky barks.

 

 

They’re at the grocery store, Clint is roaming the aisles because somehow he lost track of Kate while he was looking at all of the really neat dog toys.

Kate finds him staring at a rack of Sunday Papers and rolls her eyes, but that's before she sees a picture of a very destroyed Greenwich University, a very blurry stroke of red and blond, and a headline proclaiming that the Asgardians are back.

 


	4. You Will Always Be Danger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He throws his pillow at her, because she neglected to bring her own and there are things in this world that Kate Bishop deserves more than him. It'll pass, he signs, and he can't help but ask himself if he's lying to her.   
> \---  
> Clint inserts his foot into his mouth, Kate doesn't get paid enough to put up with this, but by the time Pizza Dog eats his pizza, things are sorta maybe kinda okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is ridiculously late and probably riddled with errors, and I haven't a clue what I'm doing, but I hope you enjoy it anyway.

It's like someone pushed the reboot button. She's watching him start all over again. Staring into space, jaw welded shut. She can't get two words out of him. He's one of those ancient computers that take forever to start up. The only reason she knows that his circuits haven't shorted out is because she can see his mind moving.

This lasts for a day.

When he hands her coffee to her the next morning, she sees the way his eyes are stormy, and she knows he has all the same questions that she does. He asks her if she happened to grab the paper on her way out of the store, and she tells him that she didn't. She does have her laptop, however, has been reading through news blogs for half the night. When he gives up on trying to figure out how to hook the television up, they sit her computer on the coffee table and huddle on the couch, watching the stories unfold in some sort of odd terror.

The footage is three days old. The footprint this encounter left behind is small compared to New York, mostly contained. The ordeal is over now, the threat neutralized. Thor took care of that. All in all, for the world's second-technically-third alien invasion, things could have been a lot worse.

They still could be. Clint knows this, has lived through this, knows that worse is still coming. This knowledge, this fear eats at him, devours the blood in his veins, is present in the tremble of his knees and the shake of his breath.

He's waiting for the day that he'll be able to utter the word "Hydra," loud enough for Kate to hear him.

They fall asleep in some sort of accidental heap sprawled out on a couch that wasn't meant to hold the two of them, an amalgamation of limbs and blankets and fear, and when he wakes up screaming again in the middle of the night, Kate pretends to be locked in the chains of her own dreams. She stirs gently when he gets up from the couch, is asleep before he comes back. When the morning wakes her, she's cold, stiff, and alone.

 

 

His aim is perfect. This much, he knows. This much is gospel. Indisputable. There's nothing wrong with his aim.

His hands, though, his hands are shaking. Not just from exertion or the sudden and extreme exercise. Not from repeated motion. Not even from age.

It's been maybe four months since they took his bow away from him. Half of that time, he ate food that had far too much to do with a blender and not enough introduction to some salt. The other half, maybe he was a little underfed, spilled too much of his stomach into a bucket, but his arms were strong. Sore after awhile, but strong. Flexible. He hadn't lost nearly as much muscle mass as he should have, and he has the awareness to be thankful for this.

But his hands are shaking. They're shaking and he can't even pretend that he doesn't know why.

When Kate finds him, with his sight locked onto a tree trunk that's dotted with arrows in all the wrong places, he wants to tell her that he isn't afraid. Not of Loki, not of the puppet strings that he still feels are tied to his limbs. He wants to tell her that half of him isn't still gone, that he never crawled inside of a bottle, never lost the capacity for caring about what the world would be like without him in it. He wants to show her all of the ribbons he never dared trace onto his skin, tell her all of the lies he stopped telling himself. Instead, he tells her he's sorry for borrowing her gear without asking. He didn't want to wake her.

He won't let her see him shoot. He collects the arrows, and they both ignore the one he breaks in his hand after he rips it from the bark. She takes the quiver that he's not sure he's ready to hand over, and they both walk back to the house.

 

 

She's angry. Not at Clint, not at herself, but at their dumb and ever-present luck. Circumstance is a bitch.

Greenwich happened. There's nothing anyone could really have done about it, except maybe Thor, but his great hair makes up for any mistakes he may have committed that would have led the ship and the portals to Earth. On behalf of the human population of the world, Kate forgives him. Thanks him, even. But this isn't about Thor.

Because if they had gone food shopping just two days before or two days after, or maybe if she just steered him away from the newspapers, put Lucky's damn leash on him like she said she would, maybe he never would have seen, would never have to know what had happened. Circumstance is a bitch.

Privately, away from all of her anger, she admits that shielding him from the world is not a feasible solution, is not even a solution at all, because this stuff, apparently, isn't going to go away. He needs to learn to deal with this. But she knows Clint, knows how stubborn he is, knows he's only going to learn to deal with this on his own terms, at his own pace, so she does her best to roll with it.

 

 

A day has passed and the tension that rests in the creases of his forehead is as intense as the tension she feels in her neck. One night on that couch and she feels like her entire body was shoved into a dryer full of rocks.

"You know, up until that day on the roof, I had only ever been in like four rooms of this place."

"Yeah?" he says, but his mind is absent, distracted.

"Yeah," she tells him, and a few beats pass before she decides it's okay to speak up again. "You know, I'm pretty sure I saw an actual bed on my way up. Like, with a mattress. And sheets. Real sheets."

"Hmmm?" He's paying particular attention to the fur beside Lucky's ear, and if his wagging tale is any indication, Lucky is absolutely loving it. The dog, at least, can hold his attention.

"So I was just wondering why you insist on sleeping on the couch."

Something in his face shifts, some sort of realization dawning on his features, as if it never occurred to him to sleep elsewhere.

"That thing is going to kill your back if it hasn't already, " she goes on, but already he looks like he's done listening to her for the day. He stands up, much to Lucky's disappointment, and squeezes around her stance in the doorway. He won't meet her eyes when he mumbles something that sounds like, "It's not that bad," and retreats to the refrigerator.

 

 

Everyone's confused by the science of it, the possibility that a handful of portals that lead to other planets, worlds, dimensions, whatever, could have threaded through this basic and unassuming atmosphere. No one knows if this was an act of war or an act of God, if it was a sign of harsher times to come or the dawning of a new age. It should have been worse, he knows. He's seen worse, been through worse, had something re-engineer his inner workings and wire him to do exactly what he was trained to do - for the other side.

The implications of this have never been lost on him, but the worst are only just dawning. There's a certain devastation that this alien tech could bring. Not just destruction, but ruin, an unraveling of the very thing that makes people like him human. This latest attack only serves to show him how vulnerable the world - his world- really is.

He hasn't read this much since before his mind was held hostage from him, and every article he reads only makes his head pound harder. There's a lot of reports attacking this event from a scientific stand point, saying things that he can't hope to understand right now. Kate suggests that maybe he should take a break from all of this, and when he ignores her, she sits down with him and finds a couple taped interviews to watch. There's one with Jane Foster saying things that go over both of their heads, and Clint doesn't think she's telling it straight anyway, but Darcy Lewis has a blog that nearly everyone else has overlooked. Kate's the one to find it, using her finely tuned and hopelessly unlicensed private eye skills. Darcy is a bit easier to understand. Call it the poly-sci degree.

Then there's Selvig. Every major news site is making a mockery of him, bringing up the footage from over a week ago at the Stonehenge. It's hard to watch, and Clint wonders if he was ever that crazy, wonders if crazy is what comes before or after suicidal.

Kate tries to make light of it, saying look, he could have ended up worse. He's not sure if he agrees, but he thinks it might make him feel the smallest bit better in the sickest sort of way.

 

 

The guy standing behind him is looking at him funny.

He pretends not to notice, pretends to be too engrossed in the headlines of tabloids that he hasn't even read. He can still feel the gaze of the man behind him. It's no one that he knows, not an agent, ally or enemy. He tries not to be paranoid. He hasn't been found, couldn't have been found. He's been so careful to hide this place.

It's not until he actually reads the tabloids he's been looking at that he puts two and two together.

"Hey, buddy, you got a problem?" Kate has noticed the staring, has noticed that it's bothering him. Kate's great like that, really, but sometimes he wishes that she would keep her head down just a little bit more, especially when the trash rag next to him has a blurry-but-recognizable picture of his face, right under the title, "The Avengers - where are they now?"

"That's Hawkguy," says the man behind him. He points a finger at Clint while Clint tries not to look guilty. He has an iron grip on the shopping cart, trying to ignore the fist of panic that's winding itself around his heart. His mind is noticeably void of a way out of this conversation, and all he can think of is some choice curse words, wonders if denying everything will really change this stranger's mind. He could run, maybe. Knock him out? There's a little old lady leaving the store now, and if he pretends that she's his grandmother -

"Pfft? That guy? With a bow and arrow? Yeah, and I'm Captain America." Kate. Perfect Kate, who laughs a little and shakes her head as she takes her receipt and change from the cashier. She sells it, really sells it, and he can see the vague notion of _maybe not_ forming on the man's face. Clint shrugs - a small attempt at maintaining the ruse, but it's all he can do with his stomach still somersaulting - and they're out the door in record time. He takes the bags from Kate's hands and tries not to think about how much her words stung. It's not until they're pulling out of the parking lot that he can muster up a, "Thanks, Hawkeye," and she asks him if the man at the store said "guy," or "eye." They share a good laugh about it.

 

 

He sees the lightning and thinks of Thor. The thunder comes next, ripping through him, and he swears he can hear it even though his aids are out. Who knows? Maybe he can. Maybe it's just at the edge of his range, filling in the holes of the last 20% of his eardrum.

When Kate flicks the light on, he knows it was loud. He remembers days where she wouldn't get up for anything less than the end of the world, and by the vibrations moving through the house, he knows that this can't be too far off.

"Clint?" Although his eyes are still adjusting to the light, he sees her mouth shape the letters of his name. There's also some hesitation there, an unspoken _I'll admit I'm afraid of the thunder if that's what you want, but if it's all the same to you, I'd rather pretend I don't have the fears of a five year old._

Immediately, he moves over, kicks the blanket up from the other end of the couch, offers her the space that's left, and she doesn't hide the relief she feels, because at the end of the day, they don't have many secrets left, not from each other.

"Don't worry. It's just a storm," he tells her, but he wonders when the last time a storm was just a storm and knows that it's been far too long since rain was only water. He throws his pillow at her, because she neglected to bring her own and there are things in this world that Kate Bishop deserves more than him. _It'll pass_ , he signs, and he can't help but ask himself if he's lying to her.

 

 

"As your best friend, I feel like it's my job to bring this up. Mostly because no one else will, but still." She half expects her statement to go without an answer, but he does her the grace of putting down his Peanuts cartoons and raising an eyebrow. It's more than she gets from him most days.

"I think you should try out the therapy thing again."

He frowns, then, such a simple expression of discontent on his face, something he's been trying to hide from her lately. She can almost feel him putting his walls up, almost feels him shutting her out in favor of Lucky, or his coffee maker, or Charlie Brown. And then something in his expression falls apart and he shatters into a broken laugh. "That's a joke, right?"

"No. I'm being one hundred percent serious. See this? This is my serious face."

"Yeah, right, you have to be joking. C'mon Katie. Me? Therapy?"

"I know that your last experience wasn't exactly your best, but it really is worth another shot, especially if SHIELD -"

"No, Kate, it's not about SHIELD." He seems bewildered, maybe a tad flustered, but strong in his answers. Responsive. Aware. Maybe all this time, all she ever needed to do was give him something to resist.

"Then what is it, Clint? Don't you think it's time to admit that this goes beyond what you or I can fix?"

He shakes his head, something between a laugh and a cough escapes him. "People like us don't do therapy. You know -"

_"People like us?"_ The house is suddenly silent in the shadow of the severity of her voice. Clint freezes, aware that something is very, very wrong, and when the quiet drags on in a way that reminds him of the thunder of his father's fists, his mouth fails him. _"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"_

The lightning strikes, and something in her stomach drops, some unknown intent finding its way to the doubt in her mind. He tries to explain himself in all the wrong ways, but Kate won't have it, not now.

"Who is _us_? The Avengers? All of your SHIELD buddies? Because that's really the safest way to handle a bunch of unstable people that hang around _loaded weapons all the damn time_?"

"It's not about -"

"Is that why I'm only ever considered an _almost_ Avenger to you?" She's yelling, spitting the words out, making sure his damaged ears can capture every one. "Only ever ' _practically_ an Avenger' to you? Because I made the mistake of _caring about my mental health_?"

"That's not what I meant. I just -"

"Yeah, I heard you. I know exactly what you meant to say, Barton."

"I didn't…I didn't realize -"

"You should have."

She turns away from him and walks down the hall to her room, and Clint is left standing in the wake of her wrath, wondering where exactly he screwed things up this time and how long it would take to save himself from the disaster he's become.

 

 

He's not quite sure how his apology to her is going to go, not even exactly sure of which part of himself he's apologizing for, but he's aware that there was a line he crossed, that her past should be safe with him, as safe in his hands as it is in her own. His mind is a mess when he knocks on her door, but he's not sure he heard an answer from the other side. He knocks again, and this time Kate is there to open it, saying something that sounds like, "I said you could come in." She doesn't meet his eyes. Instead, she turns away, goes back to the laptop that's waiting on her bed. Clint takes a few cautious steps in, takes a look at the room, smirks lightly when he sees the curtains that his mother always hated. His hands are restless, straightening out his shirt, fiddling with the aids in his ears. The speech he was assembling in his head all but vanishes, so he decides to roll with it.

"I uh…thank you. I mean, I'm sorry. Or, actually, both."

She doesn't look up from her keyboard, doesn't really acknowledge him at all, which is normally his role in the relationship.

"Kate?"

"I'm listening," she says in a tone that sounds like she isn't really listening at all.

"Okay…um…what I said back there? I didn't mean it like that. How it came out, I just…that wasn't right of me to say, and I'm sorry."

"Yeah, Clint," she sighs. "I know." She continues tapping at the keyboard, and Clint wonders how much she really knows and the extent to which he is sorry for everything. He doesn't have the words, they've escaped him, and as the minutes tick by, marked but the furious tapping of her fingers on the keyboard, Clint thinks that maybe it's time for him to leave. Kate turns the laptop towards him before he gets the chance.

"This is everything SHIELD has on the attack. There weren't any reports of Loki. For all we know, he was never here. Just Thor."

He leans over the laptop for a second, verifies the report, notes every occurrence of the SHEILD seal, before it hits him. He looks at Kate, some sort of dangerous fire burning in his eyes, and for a moment, she is alarmed.

"Where did you get this?"

She shrugs. It's not the first time she's stolen SHIELD files. By now she's practically a gold card member - steal 9, get the 10th hassle free. "So maybe I hacked into your log in. But if you wanted your account to stay safe, you should have picked a better password. Trickshot? Not very secure."

"You logged into SHIELD with my user? From this computer?"

As soon as she nods, he slams the laptop shut. "Shit!"

And then he's out the door and back in the front room, going for his backpack, his guns, the only gear he has left. She tries to follow, but stands away from his whirlwind as though he would blow her away. "Clint? What's wrong?" She's not scared, not exactly, but maybe she's nervous, panicked that whatever she did finally caused him to snap.

"We need to leave. Now!" He offers no other explanation as he wrangles with the straps on his bag. She merely watches, mystified, as he struggles to steady his hands long enough to shove his life into a backpack. He pauses, brow furred, before he mutters something about the dog and goes for the kitchen.

"Kate! Get packed. We're leaving. Now." His voice leaves no room for argument, so naturally Kate pushes at him until he makes room.

"Not until you tell me what's going on."

He pauses his retrieval long enough to whirl back on her. "You just logged onto a SHIELD server with my user. They have my location now. They're probably already on their way. Now go!"

Despite his orders, Kate stands still, unimpressed. She looks at him square until he's frustrated enough to ask her what she's thinking.

"Is it really such a bad thing that SHIELD finds you?" She wants to ground him, slow him down, make him think his way through this situation. Instead, her words seem to have the opposite effect. He tugs at his hair, and when that isn't enough, he leans both hands on the table, trying to slow his breathing. The inner turmoil he struggles with is showing in his trembling fingers, but if Kate was being honest, it was almost something she expected by now. Slowly, she repeats herself, and Clint finally answers her.

"Yeah. Yeah, that'd be bad."

"Why?" she asks carefully.

He's speaking so low that she almost doesn't catch her answer. "SHIELD isn't what you think it is anymore. It never was."

"Look, just because they put you in a psych ward doesn't mean -"

"It's not about the psych ward," he half shouts, and again, lower this time, "It's not the psych ward. This isn't about the therapy bullshit. This is so much bigger."

"You're not making sense."

"I know. I know I'm not. Shit." He runs his hands through his hair, over his face, turns away from Kate to gather his wits, then turns back to her again. "When I went under? When I was with Loki? I learned a lot of things, Kate. And just coming back from that, I - shit…I made a lot of enemies."

"Enemies? Like who?"

"Do you have any idea what I do at my day job?" he bites, then apologizes when he sees the face Kate makes at him. "Shit, Kate. Shit. I'm sorry. I don't -" he takes another minute to catch his breath before starting again. "I can't drag you into this. Not this time. This is my mess. I've gotta deal with it. But you _have_ to leave."

"Not until you start making sense," she challenges.

"No. Kate, it's not going to make sense. You have to leave. You have to fucking get out of here. We both do. End of discussion." He makes his way back to the living room and Kate follows, much to Clint's irritation.

"Except it's not the end of discussion. Because I still don't understand what's going on. And even if we did have to leave right now, where would we go? We're in the middle of nowhere, its late, and we don't have a plan. So why don't you just tell me what's up, make my staycation with you actually mean something? Please, Clint. Please."

He whirls back on her, wants to yell at her to get moving, but there's something in her eyes that gives him pause, and dammit, there's nothing he hates more than when she's right. Because, no, he doesn't have a plan, and yes, it is getting late, and of course he's not prepared to just get up and go, because even if he can fit his entire life in a bag, he won't have room for Kate on the road he's setting up for himself, and he's not ready to leave her just yet.

So, yeah, he guesses that she might be right. One more night. They won't be able to get here that fast anyway. It's why he thought it was safe enough to settle here, why he thought he could get away with removing himself from the situation - from every situation. Kate would be able to hear if anyone was driving up. They’ve got enough weapons and skills between the two of them. There's a forest just a few hundred feet away - good cover if things get hairy, if they can run fast enough. He's already figured out three different ways to take down anyone that comes through the front door, another half dozen if they come through the windows.

It's become a habit. Walk into any room, anywhere, and figure out what he needs to do to hurt people, what he can use as a weapon, how to claw his way out of his own carnage and fight another day. He supposes it's a trait he inherited from his father, forged by his brother, refined through the Swordsman, the circus, SHIELD. He doesn't know how to stop doing it, doesn't know if it's safe to try.

But he does know that the only thing he has to do to hurt Kate Bishop is to leave again, and he knows that he can't do that.

"Hydra."

Kate has been looking at him expectantly, eyes alert and questioning, but not in the invasive sort of way that everyone at SHIELD had looked at him before he left. Her's are more gentle, clouded with concerned confusion, as if she doesn't understand the taste of acid that the word leaves on his tongue. "What?"

"Hydra." He says it again, and God, it burns like a penance. "That's why we need to leave."

"What's Hydra? Clint?"

His mind starts suffocating, choking on all of the words he thought he'd never have the courage to say. The thought of saying them now terrifies him, and knowing that Kate would know a little more about his time under makes it hard to breathe. The room is spinning. His head is spinning, all sense of stability gone, until Kate prompts him once more, gently.

"Clint. Please. Tell me what you want to say." She takes his hand and tugs him to the couch. When they're both seated, he waits for the bile to stop trying to climb up his throat and make room for much worse things to spew from his tongue. He has become his secrets, and once he sets them free, he doesn't know what there will be left for him to guard.

And once more, a question that was more like answer, "Clint?"

Kate. Kate, the finest and most gifted bowman he's ever seen. Kate, who shouldn’t be anywhere near the wreckage he's become and the danger he represents. Kate, perfect Kate, nine years old and spoiled rotten Kate who won't take no for an answer if it kills her.

He thinks he would do anything to save her from the knowledge that was forced upon him, but he also knows that Kate will do anything to pick him up from the ashes of his own destruction, that she would want to know this, that he owes her these words and more. So he starts slow.

He reminds her of things she doesn't need reminding of - his service to Loki, the unknown number of lives taken by him, the enemies he rallied against SHEILD. What did he say? That there was no shortage of organizations that wanted to take a crack at SHEILD? He knew of them, had tangled with most of them, remembered contact numbers, reached out through other sources. And these old enemies, in turn, had shared whispers of the one big bad they'd missed, one that had grown through the cracks of SHIELD like vines around tree branches.

It's not relief he feels when he finally unleashes the news. He thinks he feels the same terror that is blooming on Kate's face, and maybe disappointment in himself. For months, he'd been sitting on this information, for months, he could have been weeding out their enemies. Instead, he'd let the world remain at risk, and for this he has no excuse.

"They're looking for me, Kate. They were watching me after New York and I didn't figure it out until I left that facility. They want to know how much I know. They think I'm a danger to them and they want to know how much I know before they decide to take me out."

"So that's...that's what you've been chewing on the whole time I've been here."

"That's...yeah. That's why we need to leave."

Her face reminds him of the cogs on the most intricate grandfather clock, ticking from wonder, to confusion, to anger, to fear, and back again. "But that was a SHIELD server we logged onto. Not Hydra."

"Doesn't matter. If SHEILD knows where I am, Hydra will too. They're the same. They've always been, and no one's caught it. Do you get it now? Do you get why we have to leave?"

She doesn't get it, not completely. Not the entire picture. She has questions, but in the time it takes her to choose one and ask it, Clint has already turned her around and pushed her towards her room, telling her to get packing. So many questions, but by the time she reaches the kitchen, she knows she only needs to ask one. So she turns around, calls his name again, and holds his gaze for half a lifetime, as she asks, "It took you this long to decide you wanted to let me know that your life was in danger?"

He doesn't blink but he does consider his answer, holds her gaze as steadily as her concern holds him to the ground. "It took me this long to decide that I cared about this life at all."

 

 

Lucky doesn't understand why his owners are packing up his tennis balls, or his dog food, or why there's a leash attached to his collar at such an ungodly hour of the night. Surely they aren't going for a walk. It's far too late, and there's a poorly constructed doggy bed that seems so inviting. Lucky isn't an old dog, but he isn't that young anymore either. Lucky needs his doggy naps. Lucky needs his doggy naps more than he needs night walks, needs them more than just about anything he's ever had the pleasure or displeasure of experiencing, except...maybe...could it be? Carefully, he sniffs again, tries to distinguish the odors of coffee and beer and...pizza!

Maybe, he decides, a night walk couldn't be so bad. Certainty not if it involved pizza. His bed wasn't that comfortable anyway, and the tummy rub he's getting more than makes up for this inconvenience. It's not long before he's drifting off again, stomach full of deliciously greasy goodness, only this time sleep reaches him in the back of the truck, the bumps and jostles of the road lulling him away, as well as the sound of his owner's voices, the younger saying something like, "I'm glad you finally told me," and the older replying, "I'm glad you were here to listen."


	5. There Will be Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What is this?"
> 
> "Coffee. Drink it."
> 
> "That is not coffee. That's not even close to something I would call coffee."
> 
> She rolls her eyes and shoves the cup into his hand anyway. "If you must know, that's a Caramel Frappuccino and it's the best thing that's happened to coffee this century."
> 
> \---  
> For all Clint and Kate know, the world is about to end. Why not take a road trip while they still can?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa. Hey. It's been like two years. Long time no see. Thanks for stopping by.

There's something sad in him, within him, buried deep, as if with all of the poking and prodding he endured upon his mind's return, they couldn't be bothered to surgically remove his depression. Maybe it was easier to keep tabs on a brain that was perpetually chemically imbalanced. He isn't sure.

But he does know that every time he looks to his right to find Kate curled up in the front seat, his heart bleeds a little bit more. She shouldn't be here. She doesn't deserve the consequences of his mess. 

The drive has been uneventful, mostly back country roads that tangle with the rivers, move with the land. He turns when he feels like it. If he doesn't know where he's going, neither will SHIELD. Neither will Hydra. Of course, Kate will want to know. He guesses he'll make his mind up as soon as she asks.

Even with all that's weighing on his mind, the open road is something like a blessing, fresh air in place of walls that were starting to close in. Maybe, just maybe, it feels good to do something again, although that's not something he's willing to admit to anyone else. Not yet. Not until he's sure. 

It's been awhile since he's been on the run like this. He thinks it'll be harder this time. For one thing, there's no SHIELD support, no credit cards he can use, no other base to run to. His childhood home was the one thing he had that they didn't know about. That's compromised now, and it leaves him feeling nostalgic in the worst sort of way, almost like he's guilty for something he had nothing to do with. He could blame Kate, sure, but it wasn't really her fault. She was only trying to help him play with fire. 

In an ideal world, he'd have a plan in place by the time his traveling companion awoke. But Clint doesn't live in an ideal world. Considering the events of the past year or so, he's not even sure he lives in a sane world. Aliens? Mind control? How is any of that even allowed? 

It takes him back to his circus days. Hypnosis tricks, exotic acrobatics, all a part of the grander show of stage magic. He was the help, moving boxes, feeding the animals, watching from the sidelines. It makes him feel incredibly small. How is an archer who can barely hold his bow supposed to contribute to whatever this world is becoming? 

Beside him, Kate stirs, stretching out and yawning in a way that makes him think of Natasha's cat. When she settles back into her seat, he takes his eyes off of the road long enough to give her a light smile. "Morning Sleeping Beauty," he says, and laughs when she scowls at him.

"Where are we?" Her voice is sleepy in a way that reminds him of coffee filters and maple syrup bacon.

"I think we crossed into Kansas," he tells her. He's afraid of the question that comes next.

"Where are we going?"

He concentrates on the feeling of the steering wheel in his hand and his foot on the pedal, the empty road in front of him, clear skies ahead, infinite destinations.

"You hungry?"

"A bit."

"Breakfast."

"Huh?"

"We're going to get breakfast."

 

The maple bacon is better than he thought it would be, and coffee is always a gift in itself. The scrambled eggs and hash browns are an added bonus, golden in their own way. And if he takes a pancake off of Kate's plate, neither of them mention it.

"I'm still confused about a couple of things," Kate says, and Clint can sympathize. Confused is an understatement. 

"Like?"

"Like why didn't Hydra kill you when they had the chance?"

He raises an eyebrow at her. "Glad I'm alive, are you?"

She rolls her eyes in return. "Not like that. I just mean…well they had a chance, right? To cross you off, make it look like an accident or a hit from an old enemy or something, while they still had you back in that SHIELD facility. You were pretty out of it for a while there." 

He nods, somewhat appreciative of her kind description of him. Out of it sounds a lot better than _completely and totally off the deep end._ "Guess they thought I might be an asset."

"And now?"

"Now they know I'm not. They knew as soon as I jumped ship from that facility. I'm a risk, more than anything."

"Makes sense I guess."

He sips his coffee and wonders how on earth he ended up in a world where any of this makes sense. He wishes this life had cursed him to a 9-5 office job instead of a circus internship and conferences held in flying cars and rocket ships.

As he gets up to pay the bill, woefully aware of his limited funds, Kate calls for his attention, asks another question that's weighing on her mind.

"What are we going to do?"

She's asking about Hydra, of course, and about today's plans, and tomorrow's, and about this entire concept of a future that she's watching unfold in front of them. She's asking about which roads they're going to take and which states they're going to pass through, where they're going to rest their heads at night, or if he plans on driving until he passes out, until Kate wrenches the steering wheel from his hands. She's asking about SHEILD, asking about the Avengers, about everything that happened in Greenwich, about how a terrorist organization embedded itself within the very agency that was meant to protect the average everyday citizen from space zombies and computer apocalypses. She's asking so many questions that she isn't sure what she's asking, but she asks them anyway, because these days it's better to ask something obscure than to ask something stupid, like "are you okay?" or "can you get to the place where you're okay?" or "will you ever find that place again?" 

_What are we going to do?_ she asks, because she knows better than to ask him to lie to her. What she wants to know is if Clint can reassure her beyond anything that sounds like "I don't know."

So she asks, _What are we going to do?_ and Clint locks his gaze with her own and shows off this honest, gentle smirk, the one that says he's going to surprise her, plastered between the day old stubble and the laughter lines worn into his skin from a time where it was useless to worry.

"I'm working on it," he says, then turns and leaves her alone at the table, staring in shock and something that feels like the softest glow of hope, something that she might be mistaking for the delicious remnants of fluffy flapjacks and sticky sweet syrup on her tongue. He's working on it. Whatever it is, he's working on it, and somehow that is enough to allay all of Kate's fears. 

 

He has nothing.

No - that's not entirely true. He has a skeleton, a plan that has too many endings that sound like "what if?" and "too risky," and it's looking a lot more like a choose your own adventure book than an idea that will save the world. What's a man with a bow supposed to do against the biggest threat to national security since the JFK assassination, anyway? Hell, for all he knows, these are the guys behind ole' JFK's death. He might as well call up the History Channel now and tell them to do a documentary on it.

Kate's fiddling with the radio, looking for something more intelligible than the vague and deadpan tone of static. It's completely screwing with his aids - the old ones, the purple, over the ear ones that he swore he lost three years ago (he found them the night before, when he was rummaging through the remnants of his ammo). She can't really find anything, so Clint keeps one hand steady on the wheel and waves her away with the other. He reaches over to rummage through the glovebox, finds what he's looking for, and dumps in on Kate's lap. "Here, plug that in."

Kate looks at the device with something akin to disbelief on her face. "No way."

"What? Didn't think I had caught up to the 21st century? I'm not that old y'know."

Kate bursts out laughing, if only because that was the exact opposite of what she was thinking. "This is an iPod Classic. No one has these anymore. They're practically fossils."

"Hey, that was cutting edge technology when it came out." "Yeah, so was your pager."

"I like my pager!"

"I know you do, Clint."

"Just shut up and plug the damn thing in already. Radio static is messing with my hearing."

"Sorry." She turns the volume down before plugging the iPod into the stereo. The click wheel system is hard to maneuver, but eventually she gets the thing working. "Dude, when was the last time you updated this thing?" 

"I have no idea," he admits. "Last night was the first time I've seen it in like three years." His aids weren't the only thing he found while he was packing.

"I found a playlist called 'Roadtrip Jams?'" Kate says, but she sounds as skeptical as Clint feels. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.

"Play it I guess?"

She hits the play button and turns up the volume as an old song she barely recognizes pours from the speakers. Clint taps the steering wheel to the beat of the drums while Kate comments on his "old man music." Behind them, Lucky sticks his head out the open window and lets his tongue taste the wind. 

The miles pass and the music plays on. There's a comfortable silence shared between the two of them, and Kate really wants to break it, but not so much that it shatters. "So…" she starts, but whatever she wanted to say escapes her. Maybe she wants to tell him that she's glad he's coming back to her, or that she's afraid of whatever she set in motion, so afraid that she's not sure she wants to talk about it.

"What's up, Katie-Kate?" Clint says in her voice's absence, because maybe he also feels like there's something they need to talk about, even if he'd rather embrace the feeling of asphalt on tires and the steady hum of the accelerator. 

"I told you not to call me that." Her response is automatic, out of her mouth before she can stop herself. She finds herself somewhere between relieved and annoyed, and the familiarity of it all is everything she's wanted for months. Her smiles wraps around the words that she doesn't really mean, and she tries to ignore how much this feels like home.

"Uh-huh," he says, because he knows. Of course he knows. There were days when he knew her better than he knew himself. "Cause I'm really gonna take orders from a twelve-year-old."

"Excuse you, but I'm twelve and a half, thank you very much." The wry smile Clint gives her makes it all worth it.

"Uh-huh," he says again. "And I have a stable 9-5 boring-ass office job and the biggest risk to my health is heart disease."

She scoffs a bit, then sobers. The thump of Lucky's tail and the baseline of whatever song is playing fills the gap that their words left, until Kate is finally able to tell him what she's been thinking. "Hey…Clint…I'm sorry about the house."

He figured this was coming, and while he's glad she appreciates the fact that he lost his only uncompromised safe house, he's decided that he doesn't really care. "Team Hawkeye is more important than some old dusty house." He doesn't tell her that his safe house never really felt safe, not with the ghosts of bruised knuckles and damaged drywall. Not when he remembers his mother's sobs clearer than her unmarked face.

"I just…I should have realized sooner what I was doing and -"

"Kate?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't worry about it. Okay?"

"Yeah…yeah, okay."

 

His cash supply is pretty solid, thanks to some lockboxes he stored at the farm house some time back. (It's been three years since he accidentally left all his shit behind, but finding these lost treasures makes his life easier in the face of this hardship - a blessing if he ever knew one.) Still, he wants to be careful. It'll be enough to provide for him and Kate through the trip, but not much more. Kate brought up the fair point that she was pretty darn rich, only to be shot down with the reality that, "Credit cards are pretty easy to track, girly-girl, and I don't know about you, but I'd rather not meet Hydra at the next rest stop." Every few miles he checks the rearview mirror and looks for signs of a tale. It's terrifying, exciting, and maddening, all at the same time, because a super-secret spy agency is out to get him, his friend, and his dog, and he hasn't felt this much like himself in ages. He wonders how Kate is holding up, if she's as afraid as he is, and wonders if she knows that everything's going to be okay. Against all odds, he's starting to believe in himself again, even as the weight of his own instability crushes against his heart. 

He wonders what would have happened if she had never showed up at his door. He wonders if she knows how much he owes her.

He's wondering when she's going to ask him the question that's clearly on her mind.

"Alright, I know you said that you were working on it, but I was just wondering…"

There it is.

"Where are we going?" It's a reasonable question in a not-so-reasonable world, and he really should have a better answer to it. Clearly, he has things to do, what with Hydra creeping around his workplace. He had people to see, actions to apologize for, responsibilities to own up to. And yeah, he would get to that, but he'd be lying if he said he wasn't a bit of a procrastinator. 

"You know what?" he says. He won't continue until Kate probes at him, but once she says, "what?" in that tiresome, frustrated tone that reminds him his third grade teacher, he goes on. There's this wickedly smug little smile on his face and his eyes are warning of trouble.

"I've never been to the Grand Canyon before."

 

Kate, of course, thinks he's being ridiculous. So much so that, three hours later, she is still calling him an idiot, or else she's asking if the Grand Canyon is code for some SHEILD protocol or super-secret spy base, or else she's lecturing him on the importance of road trip preparedness. Really, who on earth would take a road trip with an impending hostile takeover-slash-apocalypse looming over their shoulders - and without proper snacks?

Clint tells her that it's not safe to deal with that yet, not safe to look their opponent in the eye long enough to aim and let an arrow fly. He doesn't bring up the fact that it's hardly ever safe, and he can't decide if anything will help her understand his drive to keep running. The first time he left this place, with an optimistic outlook, and screwy hearing, and a brother he believed to have loved him, he felt like he could run for days. He had to. It wasn't safe to stop until it was.

Also, he really does want to see the Grand Canyon. He's been to Budapest, Bangladesh, and Bermuda. He's even seen the inside of a sea monster once or twice, not to mention that one time with Natasha and Jess on the moon. It’s about time he sees some overrated American landmark.

"So you're saying you don't want to come and see the Grand Canyon with me?" Clint interrupts her in the midst of her rant.

She falters in her tirade and pauses for a second before answering. "I didn't say that." He can tell she's trying to think of something else to say that will bring him back to reality, but the truth is she's not ready to go back to the real world either. In the next hour, she's telling him to pull over to grab some chips. It's going to be a long trip. 

 

 

She can tell he plans on driving through the night without a break, and she knows he'll be bent on making reckless decisions for the rest of his life. This is not one she plans on letting him make.

"We should call it a night soon."

He shakes his head as his eyes focus on the highway. "No, no, I'll keep driving," he says almost absentmindedly. "I can turn the radio off if you want to sleep."

"You've been driving all day and you won't let me take over for you. We're getting a hotel for the night."

"I'm alright," he says, and Kate actually thinks that he believes what he's saying. She's also pretty sure she can see through this act, this insane reasoning that as long as he can keep running, he'll be okay, that not needing to rest will prove how strong he is, how much he's recovered in the brief 24 hours since Kate broke down the walls he built around him. She knows he wants to believe that he's okay now, wants her to believe he's okay now, but Kate's smarter than that. They both are.

"Clint, I'm not going to let you win this one. We're getting a hotel."

He wants to argue, but when he finally spares a second to look at her, he knows it's pointless. Of course, he won't tell her she's right. Instead, he sighs, mumbling something about finding a place that will let the dog in.

 

The first hotel they find has a strict no-pets policy, but Kate's too tired to search for another one, and they figure that the place is such a dump, no one will notice. Lucky, champ that he is, is quiet the whole night through, save for the one time he had to bark at Clint because he wanted another slice from the takeout box. The same cannot be said for Clint, who's just about the worst roommate a girl could ask for - complaining about the mattress, the faulty air conditioning, the outrageously long shower that Kate took. She knows he doesn't mean it, knows that he's just looking for enough words to fill the space between them. He's lived through worse, through a time where a bed meant the cold hard ground beneath his feat, but it doesn't stop Kate from throwing a pillow at him in an attempt to shut him up. Clint supposes it's only right when the dog chooses to curl up in Kate's bed. He wouldn't want to sleep next to himself either. 

 

 

"What is this?"

"Coffee. Drink it."

"That is not coffee. That's not even close to something I would call coffee."

She rolls her eyes and shoves the cup into his hand anyway. "If you must know, that's a Caramel Frappuccino and it's the best thing that's happened to coffee this century."

"My coffee maker is the best thing that's happened to coffee this century."

"Yeah? Well your coffee maker isn't here right now, is it? Now stop holding that think like an IED and drink it."

"First of all, you wouldn't hold an IED like this. You have to disarm it first. And second of all -"

"I'll disarm you."

_"Second of all,_ I told you to get me a cup of black."

"There were out."

"It's a coffee place. There's no way they're out of black coffee."

"Okay, okay. So maybe I mixed up our orders."

"You got the same thing!"

"Mine's mocha. It's different."

He sighs, wonders if this is one battle he should give up. "This is the first and last time I ever take you to Starbucks."

"You're the one who complained about the hotel coffee."

"You have no idea how bad that was. You didn't drink it."

"Because you wouldn't let me!"

"Because it was awful!"

"You could have let me at least try it. You didn't have to ninja-swipe it from my hand and spill the whole damn thing on the floor."

"No. Listen. It was horrible. It was like someone took the remains of Dr. Doom's last experiment, added Venom's web shooter solution, and put it through a coffee grinder."

"Please. You're exaggerating."

"Am not."

"Are too."

He puts the truck in reverse and backs out of the parking space. "Am not."

"Maybe instead of acting like a child you could try the Frappuccino."

"Maybe instead of getting me a children's drink you could try getting me black like I asked."

"How am I supposed to do that when you're driving away from Starbucks?"

"Like I'm ever going to let you go in there again." 

She rolls her eyes and huffs but doesn't say anything more about it. He searches for another coffee place, something with a drive through this time, grumbling to himself. "I don't even know what a Frappuccino is."

 

Sometimes she catches him lost in thought, jaw set hard, deep in concentration, and she can almost feel him thinking about all the things he shouldn't anymore. She watches his gaze move over his hands as they clutch the steering wheel, and she knows he's going down roads in his mind that she can't follow. She wonders if he really wants to loose himself again. 

"You alright there, Hawkeye?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah…'m fine."

"Watcha thinking about?"

He appreciates her and all the ways that she'd walk on burning coals for him, because, God, she loves to ask the dangerous questions. He's just not sure he's ready to cut the wire right now. "Nothing much, Hawkeye." 

He really does hate to disappoint her, hates to let the silence gnaw at whatever conversation she hoped to draw from him. It wouldn't hurt her to talk to her…catch up on the last year…tell a good story, maybe.

"So…did I ever tell you about the time some goon tried to mug me for my kidney?"

 

 

Half of the day is gone. Kate is dosing in the passenger's seat. The abrupt halting of the vehicle stirs her from her nap. "Wha-?" She looks around, looks at Clint, blinking speculatively. "Lunch already?"

He fishes a ten from his wallet and gives it to her. "Listen, I need you to go in there and get me another one of those Frap things. Just be quick about it, okay? And whatever you do, don't use my name."

She realizes they're parked in front of a Starbucks and the world suddenly catches up with her. "What, afraid the whole universe will find out that the inferior Hawkeye drinks children's coffee?"

"Would you just do it?"

She does, and he swears he can hear her cackling the entire walk through the parking lot. It's something she'll hold over him for the rest of their lives, but he's okay with it, because it's one more thing that will keep him grounded. 

 

 

It's something he thinks about it the dead of night, when Kate's sleeping soundly in the bed next to his, lulled to sleep by the sound of the evening news and the even hum of Lucky's snores beside her. After all this time, the dog still choses her. Clint doesn't blame him. 

He supposes it's time for him to nod off as well, but he's restless. More than that, he's afraid. He may very well be leading his best friend down a suicide mission in the form of a road trip vacation. He wouldn't feel right about himself if the thought didn't keep him up at night, but he'd rather forget about the price on his head and the lives he holds in his hands. 

He thinks about all the times he's been in the exact situation before, at a hotel in Budapest, Bangladesh, Bermuda, when it was Nat in the bed next to him and not Kate, when it was terrorist cells and black market buyers he had to eliminate instead of his own agency.

He'd give anything to talk to Nat right now, make sure she was safe, make sure that he wasn't alone in this. He'd give anything to keep Kate, capable as she was, away from this mess he calls his life.

He'd give anything to quiet his mind and get some damn sleep.

In the morning, she tells him "You look like hell, Barton."

He tells her he's "just returning the favor," before warning her away from the hotel coffee. She rolls his eyes at him. It's another few days of this, team Hawkeye, on the open road, avoiding their problems by way of sightseeing, eating at the best dinners in America, sleeping in the worst hotels on the highway. This, this escape, this journey. They savor what they can of it, the days where they can separate friend from partner with the full understanding that friend and partner will always be one in the same. It's a favor he'll be repaying her for the rest of his life. He wouldn't have it any other way.

 

 

"It's gorgeous."

"It really is."

"No, I don’t think you heard me. I said it's gorge-ous."

"Really, Katie?" He tries to sound serious, but the laughter escapes him anyway.

"Shut up. You know you would have said the same thing if you thought of it first."

She's right, of course, but he doesn't want to give her the satisfaction.

The Grand Canyon is aptly named. It's big, it's wide, it stretches on forever, down into the Earth's crust, out into the horizon. It's early evening, a few hours before the sun goes down. The light bathes the land in an intimate yellow glow. 

It’s stunning. Amazing. It's everything he thought it would be, but nothing that he actually hoped for.

It's not going to save his life, his agency, his world. It's not going to expose Hydra for what it really is, or shelter the people he loves from the coming fallout. It's not going to give him the courage to draw back his bowstring with a steady hand, to wield a knife amid enemies who are aiming guns. It's not going to make everything okay again.

"Alright there, Hawkeye?"

It's a let-down. A hollow victory at the end of a long road. He doesn't know what he was expecting, not exactly, but he had hoped for something…more.

"Never better, Hawkeye."

If nothing else, it's a wakeup call, a personal summons to action.

She doesn't want to ruin the moment, to take both of them from the present and shove them into some unknown future, but if she doesn't question him, no one will. "You know what I'm gonna ask, don't you Clint?"

"Sure do, Katie-Kate." "And?"

"You know what the answer has to be." "Hydra." He nods solemnly, eyes never leaving the landscape before him. "The road ahead…it's not going to be as fun as the road behind. If you want out -"

"No. No way. I'm in this, same as you." It was never a question.

He tears his gaze away from the cracked earth, the boundless sky, long enough to look her in the eye. "There's no going back from this. If I mess up, if things go south, there's no running. There's no fixing it." "I know. And I told you. I'm in." Her voice is stern, a no-nonsense 'don't mess with me' tone that matches the seriousness in his. 

But a few more minutes wouldn't hurt, not when they took so long to get here, not when they're already so late to the party. It's not their fault that Hydra's "Save the Date" invitation got mixed up with their blueprints for world domination.

Eventually, they turn back, head to the car, Kate's grip tight on Lucky's leash, Clint fishing for his keys, a wordless promise passing between the two.

_Together. We're in the Together._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the supreme delay in this. Hope you enjoyed anyway!
> 
> I'm thinking I can get one or two chapters out of this, plus maybe an epilogue. When they'll go up, I have no idea, but I'll try to finish it up this summer. Thanks for reading!


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